NZD/USD Under Pressure Below 0.69 on Lower Oil The NZD/USD pair is seen trading with a heavy tone in the Asian session, with the prices surrendering 0.69 handle amid weakness across the commodities’ space. NZD/USD recovers from 0...
Japanese Firms’ Long-Term Inflation Expectations Weakened in March According to the latest Japanese Corporate Price Expectations survey, Japan’s companies see falling inflation expectations, which raised doubts whether the BOJ’s stimulus measures are yielding the expected results...
Asian Stocks Track Wall Street Higher After US Jobs Renewed optimism hit the Asian stock markets this Monday following better than expected US jobs data, and triggered a relief rally in the regions’ indices after last week’s steep declines...
Australia's Feb Retail Sales Fails to Meet Expectations Australia's Feb retail sales came at 0.0% m/m vs 0.4% expected and 0.3% last. Key Points The trend estimate rose 0.2% in February 2016. This follows a rise of 0.2% in January 2016 and a rise of 0.3% in December 2015...
Greece has demanded an explanation from the IMF over a leaked conversation in which top officials allegedly discuss the Greek bailout. A transcript, published by Wikileaks, shows the officials discussing ways of putting pressure on Greece, Germany and the EU to get them to wrap up talks...
Rapid gains in Americans finding jobs strongly implies the economy is running at above-average speed. But a broader measure of growth says the U.S. has stumbled since last fall. What’s to believe? Side with employment. Companies hire only if they are confident they can increase sales...
2016 was greeted with a bout of nerves over the fate of the Chinese economy and, perversely, a weak oil price. To a first approximation, American markets have recovered the ground lost, but European and Japanese markets remain well below the values seen at New Year...
America's central bank has two goals: get the country to full employment and keep the costs of goods stable. The Federal Reserve can put a fat check mark next to those goals. So why is the central bank so hesitant to raise interest rates from almost near zero? The U.S...
Britain’s current account deficit is the worst ever recorded in peace-time since the Bank of England started collecting records in 1772 under the reign of George III...
An Economics Education by Bitcoin - Part II By Brian Blum The first Bitcoin wallets were integrated with the distributed systems which talked to each other to reach a consensus on transactions which had taken place. This consensus is called the "block chain...
An Economics Education by Bitcoin - Part I By Brian Blum For those unfamiliar with Bitcoin, there are better ways to begin understanding it than this article; I'd recommend Wikipedia for starters...
USD/JPY: Expectations of the Interest Rate Increase in the USA Have Significantly Decreased At the closing trading session in Asia Japanese stock index Nikkei Stock Average fell by 3.6% to 16164.16 points...
U.S. Consumer Sentiment Drops Less Than Previously Estimated In March While the University of Michigan released a report on Friday showing an upward revision to its U.S. consumer sentiment index for March, the revised reading still indicated a deterioration compared to the previous month...
US ISM Manufacturing PMI Rebounds to Expansion Territory in March The US Institute of Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing PMI index released today showed the activity returned to expansion territory in March, indicating the sector may have bottomed out. The headline figure printed at 51...
U.S. Manufacturing Index Indicates Growth For First Time In Six Months After reporting contractions in U.S...
USD Still Vulnerable ahead of NFP Report – MUFG Lee Hardman, Currency Analyst at MUFG, notes that the US dollar continues to remain on the defensive ahead of the release today of the latest non-farm payrolls report...
JPY: Stronger Yen Hits Business Confidence in Japan - MUFG Lee Hardman, Currency Analyst at MUFG, suggests that the weakness in the Japanese equity market and the strengthening of the yen likely reflects as well a further loss of investor confidence in Abenomics following the release overnight of...
Euro Rises As Eurozone Manufacturing Growth Improves The euro strengthened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday, after data showed that the Eurozone manufacturing growth improved more than initially estimated in March...
US: Less Dovish Fed Speak – Investec Research Team at Investec, notes that in terms of US economic data yesterday, the main takeaway was further improvement in US manufacturing, with the March Chicago PMI reading showed an increase of 6pts last month to a better than expected 53.6 (vs. 50...
